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Get To Know The Beavs: Tayler Champion

Tayler Champion will be in her first season with the Beavers after arriving from Inglewood High School in Southern California. Champion impressed during her four years at Inglewood, where she lettered every season. This season, she can be found wearing No. 3 for the Beavers.

Take a look and learn more about one of the Beavers' newest players.

WHO:Tayler Champion is a 6-foot-1 guard/forward for the Beavers, coming from Inglewood High School in Los Angeles. She was an outstanding high school player who was recognized nationally by recruiting services. She is successful at both scoring and rebounding, making her a balanced player at both the guard and forward positions. Champion is an inside/outside style shooter who has the ability to knock down three-pointers.

WHERE SHE COMES FROM:Tayler Champion lettered in each of her four years at Inglewood. In both her junior and senior years, she was named the Ocean League's Most Outstanding Player while earning All-Area honors in each of her four seasons. Making things even better, she was the team's captain every season.

As a senior, Champion averaged 13.9 points and 8.3 rebounds per game to go along with 1.4 steals, 0.8 blocks and 2.2 assists. She set a season-high with 24 points in her last high school game, which came March 12 against Woodbridge.

Prior to her senior year, Champion was rated as the nation's No. 53 forward by ESPN's HoopGurlz.com, one of the nation's premier recruiting services. This came on the heels of a 20-9 season for Inglewood, which included an 8-2 Ocean League mark. As a junior, in helping lead Inglewood to the impressive mark, Champion averaged 16 points per game. She led Inglewood with 9.3 rebounds per game while tallying 45 blocks, 41 steals and 33 assists.

That season, of course, earned her league Most Outstanding Player honors, as mentioned before.

WHO SHE IS: Champion was born in Los Angeles and considers Inglewood her hometown. She has one sibling, Tyler, 2 and is the daughter of Robin and Anthony Scott. Tayler graduated high school with a GPA of 3.25 and was one the Honor Roll all four years while also being on the National Honor Society. Who would she invite if she could have any three people to dinner, living or dead? They would have to be Kobe Bryant (also her favorite athlete), Candice Parker and Angelina Jolie. Her favorite city to have visited is Baton Rouge, La., and she wants to see Miami. Before coming to Corvallis full time, Tayler spent the summer seeing family and friends. Her favorite sport besides basketball is football, and if she wasn't playing basketball, she would be at home, bored. Something people don't know about her? She puts Kool Aid on her pickles. Lastly, she chose Oregon State because 'it felt like home, a peaceful place.'

Champion and the Beavers opened up preparations for the 2009-10 season last Friday when the team was allowed its first practice by the NCAA. Stay tuned to osubeavers.com to learn more about members of the 2009-10 and to read more about the upcoming season. OSU opens its exhibition season Nov. 2 at legendary Gill Coliseum.